


"Somebody is supposed to be a grown up here"

by ceciliaj



Category: Daria - Fandom
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-26
Updated: 2010-11-26
Packaged: 2017-10-13 09:21:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/135698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ceciliaj/pseuds/ceciliaj
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the Bechdel Test Comment Fic-a-thon on lj.  Daria and Jane reunite during college and end up going on a road trip.</p>
            </blockquote>





	"Somebody is supposed to be a grown up here"

Daria and Jane thought they would keep in touch at college, but once they'd left Lawndale, they kind of couldn't bear to think about each other. Both were making lots of new friends at their respective colleges, although really, neither had changed as much as she'd like to think.

Jane, of course, had been working on her art, although not as much as she'd say she'd been. Actually, Jane had fallen into a new autobiographical comics project, which sucked up all her time, and left her totally uninteresting in the paintings and expressionist sculpture that had gotten her accepted into the prestigious program. She'd met a few girls at a Harvard art party to which none of them had been properly invited -- they turned out to be cartoonists from a school in Vermont, and Jane had ended up spending the entire evening trying to make them laugh on the most architectural couch at the party. She'd been wildly embellishing stories from high school, and the girls, who'd all been to fancy prep schools with other children of art world inhabitants who'd made it, simply couldn't get enough. Jane was thrilled to meet people who had no idea how seriously she took her art -- the problem with her own program was that everyone was so competitive, that it was hard to talk about ideas that were tentative, in progress, intimate.

Jane had always suspected that this kind of thing would be what made college so far superior to high school -- she'd felt so suffocated toward the end of her time in Lawndale by Daria, by Trent, and by her surroundings, by then so familiar as to seem rotten. No longer did they merely induce anxiety -- now, it was disgust. And art school had so quickly reproduced this kind of suffocating social space, where everyone felt that they knew you based on your medium of choice and third day outfit, and so, Jane started partying elsewhere, trying on new identities and personas, trying to find the right audience.

The weekend previous, she'd gone to a party at MIT, and convinced a corner of gullible boys that she was going to appear on -- and win! -- the upcoming season of Survivor. It had been fun, but it wasn't quite right. But this weekend, in spite of her intentions to find new connections in the art forgery world (hey, at least it paid money), she'd wound up with the charming cartoonists, and with them, she only had to be herself in order to entertain. It was funny how things like this always happened to Jane -- she'd started the comics project after meeting Jessica Abel at a BFAC visiting artists lecture, figuring it might loose some ideas she couldn't access for some reason. And now, she realized that comics came with a community, a community of smart, unpretentious women, who liked her. They liked her so much, in fact, that they invited her to come visit them in Vermont sometime, like maybe for their upcoming Halloween party. But there was just one condition -- she simply had to bring along this girl Daria, who sounded hilarious.  
Jane hadn't even realized she'd been talking about Daria, but then, she'd had about a bottle and a half of cheap red wine by this point in the evening, and so it struck her getting-emotional-drunk self that it was about time to make the call.

"Daria?"

"Oh my God! Sorry guys, hang on, it's, like, my best friend ever."

"Daria, what happened to you? Thank God I called, it sounds like you're in the last stages of some kind of -- initiation! Did you learn nothing from all that _Sick Sad World_ we watched? I'm coming to get you."

"Jaaaaane, no! Jane, no. I have just found that I am considerably more pleasant when I've gotten, what's the word? You, with the bowtie, what's the word you taught me tonight? That is correct. Sloshed."

"Oh, Daria. Anyway, here's the deal. We're going to go to a Halloween party in Vermont this weekend. With cartoonist girls. I assume you've hopped on the bi-curious train, too, by this point -- I always thought you were staring at me a little too intensely, missy, but I thought it was just because I had pizza grease all over my chin. Anyway, these girls are cute, and fun, and the inspiration for my upcoming masterpiece. And you, you haven't even spoken to me since August. And listen, we're adults now. We're not going to Alternapalooza as groupies. We're -- well, okay, basically it's the same, except we're hanging out with people who I think can actually help us to have an epic college experience. Are you in?"

…

"Daria?"

"Yes. Yes, I can do that. But Jane…"

"Yes, Daria?"

"Nevermind. I'll see you soon."

Daria stumbled home, a flood of memories from high school, intercut with memories from these first few months of college, overwhelming her. She stared in the dirty bathroom mirror for a full ten minutes when she got home, wondering if Jane would be able to tell how much she had changed. She was still basically a nerd, sure, and she still did well in school -- although, like Jane, she'd lost the desperation, indistinguishable from, inspiration, that had defined the height of their friendship. She was now, basically -- exactly like every other American college student she knew. Thank God she at least had a friend who was an artist -- a friend who was something other than a self-congratulatory Raft student, anyway, who wanted to take her to Alternapalooza -- oops -- alterna-comics-pa, whatever. There it was. There was the giddiness.  
The next week flew by, for both of them. Both spent an unprecedented time trying to reconstruct their high school look -- Jane remembered how good she looked in red, and Daria remembered how strong and protected from the world her combat boots made her feel. They were ready.

They had decided to take public transport to Vermont -- neither had a car in Boston, and they figured it contributed to their art people cred. And so, when they met at the station, Jane tinkering anxiously with her homemade jewelry, Daria, with the clicky part of her pen, they declared implicitly that they would not talk about what they were doing. Neither would admit how much they missed the other, how much they'd built this trip up, replayed their drunk phone call in their minds, made sure to pack exactly as much in order to make it seem they'd done it at the very last minute, etc.

When they arrived at the girls' house in Burlington, neither admitted how completely bowled over they were by how cool it was -- not how architectural the couches were, not how funky the light fixtures were, and certainly not how Jane, having been on a never-aired pilot for an HGTV show about artful design (Jane!), could see them working with some of the same ideas she'd uncovered about New England living. No, it was as if they'd been transported into an alterna-Lawndale, but one that made sense for post-high school living. Daria actually found herself marveling at the view of fall leaves and bird feeders out the window, and Jane actually found herself wanting to photograph things she didn't hate or create -- a first, if memory serves.

The best friends looked at one another, and then they looked back at their hosts. Jane smiled knowingly at Daria, " Well, someone is supposed to be a grown up here." Daria, sober for the first time since starting college, said "you guys have a gorgeous place." "Thanks," said their hostess. "Now let's take some cider out to the porch and talk about Jane's project." "My, my project?" Jane stammered, wondering how they'd realized that her stories were part of something larger than simply her dazzling personality. "Jane, we have tumblrs, too," smiled their hostess. "And we're pretty sure that, with the help of your 'hilarious friend,' that is, the other half of your comic book writing team, it's gonna be awesome."

"If you say so," Daria said, pulling out her notebook from her satchel -- even if you pretend you're not excited about a trip, you still bring your notebook, she smiled to herself.


End file.
